[Axial]

Some of these things can not be fully rendered until NVIDIA releases a few bug free graphics cards in the next product line with DirectX 11 and next generation PhysX technology over the coming months. Objective persons know that Oleg is waiting for these cards to reveal the final rendering stage of graphics for Storm of War. The current graphics cards which his team is using in these videos will not render all the graphics features that the next line of NVIDIA cards will later in 2010.

*cough*

I don't think "bug-free graphics" has anything to do with it this time around. First, the bugs were in IL-2 and not the drivers, and second we aren't using OpenGL this time around, we're using DirectX. Historically-speaking, nVidia is the weaker contender for DirectX. It is not logical to assume Storm of War's performance will be in any way similar to IL-2's on graphics grounds because they have two different primary rendering APIs.

Also, the next line of cards is already here. According to synthetic and practical data, performance for the GTX480 falls below the HD5970 and just barely above the HD5870. The problem? It has a $100 price premium like I predicted for only a modest 10% performance gain. It runs very hot (86 degrees Celcius) and draws a wopping 290W of power. nVidia missed their mark, I'm afraid. What that means for us is that we have to wait another generation before nVidia gets its act together and delivers something that doesn't perform like a six-month old card.

For those curious, the slightly cheaper GTX470 performs above the HD5850 and below the 5870 and runs just as hot and is almost as power hungry. Both units have disabled cores due to defects, meaning they weren't able to manufacture the original spec card in any sustainable quantity. I suspect when they do get some, they'll bin them as GTX490 parts or something to that effect.

Having said all that, I'm pretty positive that today's upper-mid-range cards are more than capable of rendering Storm of War on maximum settings at the average 1680x1050 resolution, and that the enthusiast options can do it at higher resolutions.